Focusing on the B2C Segment

For this project, the focus shifts to Dustin's complementary B2C segment. Unlike the B2B segment, their B2C strategy prioritizes profitability over scale and is primarily served through their online platform Dustin Home, with a strong emphasis on hardware sales.

Optimizing Desire & Action to Drive Conversions

This project focuses on the lower stages of the AIDA funnel—Desire and Action—to identify opportunities that can enhance product appeal and minimize barriers to purchase. By addressing these areas, the goal is to drive conversions and improve the overall customer experience.

Given the constraints on resources, features backed by strong data, low implementation costs, and those that also benefit the B2B customer journey are prioritized.

The research plan, guided by design thinking principles, includes:

• Mapping the current B2C customer journey to empathize with users and identify friction points, ensuring a clear understanding of their needs and experiences.
• Conducting usability interviews to foster empathy and uncover actionable insights, enabling a deeper connection with user motivations and challenges.
• Identifying industry-agnostic design patterns to provide a solid foundation for reliable user-friendly intuitive design that has been tested across various contexts.
• Benchmarking design patterns against industry competitors to reveal what competitors are doing well and where gaps exist in the current market, ensuring the selected solution provides a competitive edge.
• Creating high-fidelity mockups to prototype and test a concept that is desirable for users, feasible to implement, and viable for business objectives.

Mapping Out the B2C Customer Journey

A customer journey map is collaboratively developed through self-conducted usability testing. The process involves multiple review rounds, with the first round focusing on maintaining neutrality and ensuring completeness. In subsequent rounds, an initial UX audit is performed to identify and highlight potential friction points for improvement.

Conducting Usability Interviews

The goal of the usability interviews is to uncover pain points in the purchasing process for Dustin Home’s and to identify opportunities to improve user experience.

Participant Profile

The ideal participants are individuals who most frequently interact with the retail platform:

• Representing the target demographic of male users aged 35–55
• Residing in Sweden.
• Employed in small to medium-sized businesses.
• Having prior experience with e-commerce platforms, particularly those offering electronics or IT products.

Recruitment Plan

Given budget constraints, participants are recruited from existing networks and through voluntary outreach. Four interviews are conducted remotely using Lookback, a tool enabling live observation, session recording, and transcription. Despite recruitment efforts, participants skewed younger (late 20s), highlighting the need for future investment in participant compensation to improve demographic alignment.

Methodology

A semi-structured interview format was combined with usability testing. Participants completed key tasks within the checkout process while verbalizing their thought process ("think-aloud" protocol). Observers interacted via a virtual observation room to provide input without disrupting the sessions. Empathy maps were then created to synthesize findings, focusing on user motivations, frustrations, and needs.

Research Questions & Testing Flows

• How do users perceive their journey from the homepage to checkout?
  • Tasks: Assess the first impression of the homepage, navigate to a product detail page, add a product to the cart, and proceed to the checkout process.
• What challenges or friction points do users encounter throughout the journey?
  • Tasks: Explore product details, interact with cart functionality, proceed to checkout, enter shipping information, review payment methods, and confirm the purchase.
• What features would encourage users to create an account post-purchase?
  • Tasks: Evaluate account creation prompts on the confirmation page and assess the effectiveness of messaging highlighting account benefits.

Key Insights from User Interviews

The user interviews revealed several critical insights about the B2C customer experience at Dustin:

Pain Points

• Complexity in Navigation: Users expressed frustration with busy or cramped designs and over-complicated navigation. Simplicity and clear pathways are desired.
• Price Sensitivity: Cost is a recurring concern, especially when balancing quality with affordability.
• Account Creation Barriers: Resistance to mandatory account creation before checkout was noted. Most users prefer a guest checkout and are open to account benefits post-purchase.

60% of users prefer a guest checkout—simplifying the process is crucial to reducing friction.

Motivations and Gains

• Trust and Reliability: A consistent theme is the importance of trust, including reliability of delivery, product quality, and service.
• Ease and Speed: Quick, streamlined processes, especially for checkout and delivery, are critical motivators.
• Detailed Product Information: Users seek confidence in their purchases through comprehensive specifications, comparisons, and reviews.

Opportunities for Improvement

• Enhanced Filters and Search: Users requested better filtering options (e.g., by memory, specifications) to find products more easily.
• Incentives for Account Creation: Highlighting benefits like loyalty points, faster future checkouts, and exclusive offers could encourage account sign-ups.
• Simplified Checkout Process: A frictionless checkout experience with minimal steps and clarity in payment and shipping details is crucial.

Identifying Industry-Agnostic Design Patterns

Building on insights from user interviews, the checkout process is identified as a critical area for improvement. This focus aligns with findings from the Baymard Institute, a leading authority in e-commerce research with over 130,000 hours dedicated to understanding effective, industry-agnostic design patterns. Their data reveals a persistent global cart abandonment rate of 68.8% over the last 13 years, underscoring a key area to be addressed.

Two out of three users abandon their purchase during the checkout process.

Understanding Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment is a common behavior among e-commerce users, often resulting from how they interact with online stores. Many users browse without intending to make an immediate purchase, with 42.5% falling into a "just browsing" category that is difficult to influence.

However, for users with purchase intent, the reasons for cart abandonment break down as follows:

Baymard Institute's research indicates that conversion rates can increase by 35% solely through usability enhancements in the checkout process.

Best Practices for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

We identify six targeted design pattern optimizations that address the "too slow or complicated checkout process" as a key reason for responsible for 22% of cart abandonments:

1. Availability of Guest Checkout: Simplify the path to purchase by allowing users to check out without creating an account.‍
2. Visual Hierarchy of Checkout Options: Ensure the guest checkout option is prominent and intuitive, reducing friction for users.‍
3. Transparency in Checkout Flow: Provide clear, upfront information about shipping costs, delivery timelines, and payment methods.‍
4. Ease of Entering Payment Details: Optimize input fields and support multiple payment methods for a seamless experience.‍
5. Post-Purchase Account Creation Prompts: Encourage users to create an account after completing their purchase, emphasizing added benefits.‍
6. Use of Confirmation Emails for Re-engagement: Reiterate the value of account creation and provide personalized follow-ups to drive post-purchase engagement.

Benchmarking Design Patterns Against Industry Competitors

To assess Dustin's position in the Swedish B2C electronics market, the six key usability criteria were benchmarked against four major competitors: Komplett, Webhallen, Elgiganten, and Inet.

Findings

• Webhallen, Elgiganten, and Inet: These competitors fully adhere to usability best practices for all six criteria, providing a seamless and optimized checkout experience.
• Komplett: Surprisingly, none of the six criteria were implemented, indicating significant opportunities for improvement.
• Dustin: Currently meets two out of six criteria, with considerable room to enhance usability and align with industry standards.

This analysis highlights the competitive advantage Dustin can gain by prioritizing improvements in these key areas to deliver a more user-friendly checkout experience.

Proposed Solution: Delayed Account Creation in Checkout

Leveraging findings from research and benchmarking, high-fidelity mockups are created to visualize proposed solutions, focusing on:

Keep Users Focused on Buying, Not Signing Up

Research indicates that 42% of websites disrupt the checkout flow by prompting users to create an account too early, leading to hesitation and drop-offs—a challenge that Dustin also faces.

• Delaying account creation until the confirmation step improves user experience by removing distractions and simplifying the process, as users only need to create a password after completing their purchase.
• To further enhance the experience, ensure the guest checkout option is highly visible, ideally positioned at the top-left corner on desktop or as the first option on mobile, to prevent it from being overlooked.
• Build trust and transparency by informing users upfront about the delayed account creation process with a clear message, such as, “Check out as a guest. You can create an account after checkout,” to set expectations and reassure shoppers.

Testing reveals that showcasing 3–5 benefits post-purchase (e.g., faster checkout, order tracking) boosts willingness to register without interrupting purchases. Highlighting the benefits of creating an account on the order confirmation page emphasizes the value of signing up, but only after the purchase is complete.